Truth as One and Many

Michael P. Lynch

Abstract

What is truth? This book defends a new answer to this question. Traditional theories of truth hold that truth has only a single uniform nature. All truths are true in the same way. More recent deflationary theories claim that truth has no nature at all. This book rejects both extremes and defends the thesis that truth is a functional property. To understand truth we must understand what it does, its function in our cognitive economy. Once we do that, we'll see that this function can be performed in more than one way. And that in turn opens the door to an appealing pluralism. Beliefs about the ... More

What is truth? This book defends a new answer to this question. Traditional theories of truth hold that truth has only a single uniform nature. All truths are true in the same way. More recent deflationary theories claim that truth has no nature at all. This book rejects both extremes and defends the thesis that truth is a functional property. To understand truth we must understand what it does, its function in our cognitive economy. Once we do that, we'll see that this function can be performed in more than one way. And that in turn opens the door to an appealing pluralism. Beliefs about the concrete physical world needn't be true in the same way as our thoughts about matters — like morality — where the human stain is deepest.

End Matter

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